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School

Western University

Department

Geography

Course

Geography 2011A/B

Professor

Wendy Dickinson

Semester

Winter

Description

Geography: Ontario and the Great Lakes
Lecture 1: Land Use in Ontario- Urban Sprawl
Smart Growth film: we need balance, not space
Sprawl: Inner cities and outer suburbs- A Fred Friendly Seminar film: American
dream and developments of the suburbs.
Sprawl: low denisity, discontinuous development, that forms in suburbs
Sprawl is the spreading out of a city and its suburbs over more and more rural land
at the periphery of an urban area.
• Conversion of open space into built-up, developed land over time
• Discontinuous
• Low density
• Homogenous, sense of place
Characteristics of Sprawl:
• High volumes of traffic: prisoner to your car, not sensible
• Scattering of businesses, shops and homes: no feasible way to walk to each
place
• Inadequate public transportation: not convenient for busses to go
• Pedestrian unfriendly streets: only sidewalks in certain areas
• Zoning that divides neighbourhoods from offices, shops and restaurants;
• Parking lots that push buildings back and farther away from each other:
developed parking in the front, people want to know there is parking
• Inside out malls: series of places where people park to go to other places, not
pedestrian friendly
• Urban key island effect: keeps them warmer, hot spots, also makes it possible
for water to go instantaneously to sewers, lakes, rivers
Facts
• At the current rate, an additional 260,000 acres (1,070 km2) of rural land
will be urbanized by 2031 (an area double the size of the City of Toronto)
• 92% of that land is Ontario's best farmland
Sprawl in Ontario:
• Golden Horseshoe growing by over 115,000 people per year
• In 15 years, it will be the third largest urban region in North America behind
only New York and Los Angeles
• We are very dense in some areas, not in others
• The horseshoe: developed more north
Low Density= High Cost
• Does growth pay for growth?
• Infrastructure costs: maintaining everything
• Other externalities:
– illnesses
– time lost in cars
– traffic accidents
– noise
– economic costs of climate change Household Costs of Sprawl
• Savings:
– Cheaper land is further from city centre, part of American dream
• Costs: over time the fear is
– Increased property taxes due to maintenance of infrastructure
– Extra transportation costs since all trips require a car
– Time spent driving
Consuming Precious Land
• Land is finite
• Land used for urban development is often prime agricultural land
• Open land also preserves habitat and absorbs rain
• Picture: shows how they aren’t as efficient (suburbs)
• Commercial Zoning picture: agricultural use to urban use
Public Health: use of fossil fuels
• Millions of vehicles = billions of litres of gas used
• Emit millions of tonnes of pollution
• 16,000 premature deaths/year in Canada
• Air pollution costs Ontario over $1 billion/year
Climate Change
• Burning fossil fuels = GHG emissions
• Current Impacts:
– permafrost thaw
– accelerated coastal erosion
– increasing severity of storms and droughts
• Future Impacts
Energy
• Sprawl requires abundant energy
• Sprawl requires cheap energy
• Suburbs will become much more expensive
Water Quality and Quantity
• Clearing forest and agricultural cover increases runoff
• Storm sewers gather oil, grease and toxic chemicals from pavement and
deposits them in rivers and lakes
Wildlife
• Expansion into woodlands and wetlands destroys habitat
• Primary threat to woodla